


Making Lists

by ClaraxBarton



Series: Amerihawk Week [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Modern AU, Theatre, backpacks are cool, clint has no game, coffee meet cute, slutty! steve, steve has all the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 04:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16278218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: Clint has a few minutes before a big job interview, and it's just enough time to meet a guy who meticulously catalogs his one night stands.





	Making Lists

**Author's Note:**

> As always, all the thanks to Ro for the amazing editing.
> 
> And a particularly huge thanks to CB who wouldn't let me give up on this idea, and has literally been urging me on with this since... June?? July???

Clint checked his watch again.

 

1:15. 

 

His meeting wasn’t until 2:00, and like a responsible adult - or, like the adult who was physically shoved onto the train by Natasha at 10:49 am - he was now forty-five minutes early. 

 

Actually, he had arrived at 12:38 on the dot, had managed to find the theatre he was meeting the director at, and had snagged some lamb kebabs from a food truck because he was starving and the nearest restaurant, according to google, was an Asian fusion place inside of the Four Seasons hotel.

 

Considering that Clint was wearing his  _ only _ pair of non-paint spattered jeans and the same t-shirt he had gone to the bar in two nights ago, and still kind of smelled a bit like rum and fog and maybe just a  _ little _ like sex, he didn’t think he would be admitted to the Asian fusion place. Or to the Four Seasons lobby. 

 

And, of course, there was the reality that he couldn’t  _ afford _ to eat at a place inside of the Four fucking Seasons.

 

So here he was, inhaling the kebabs while simultaneously looking at his phone and wondering what the fuck he was going to do for the next forty-five minutes. 

 

He was standing across the street from the theatre, some four-story gorgeous structure of glass and steel that he knew, from his rather in-depth google stalking, had been built just ten years ago after a mountain of grants and donations had been heaped on the ARTSHIELD foundation and- 

 

And he made himself pause between bites so he didn’t choke.

 

Today was a big deal. 

 

The biggest of fucking deals in Clint’s rather rocky career as a scenic designer.

 

This was his shot at- Well, not the major leagues, but the very highest of the minor leagues. He wished he followed baseball as much as Natasha did so he had a better analogy for himself. 

 

Today was step two in the interview process for the chance to design scenery for an Off-Broadway show in this gorgeous theatre, directed by a (in)famous director, written by an insanely talented playwright who was, incidentally, hot as hell and- 

 

Clint took a sip of his water and grimaced.

 

What he really needed was a coffee.

 

The train ride into Manhattan from Brooklyn had been just over ninety minutes (what would Clint do without train delays in his life, anyway?), and the coffee Natasha had gifted him when she shoved him onto the train platform had long since been emptied and tossed.

 

Clint polished off his kebabs and used one hand to open up the navigation tool on his phone and search for the nearest Starbucks. 

 

Destination fixed, he tossed his trash, adjusted his backpack (he didn’t care how many times Natasha rolled her eyes and insisted he needed to get a briefcase, or at least a messenger bag like a grown-up, and stop using the same backpack he had been using since grad school - he was saving the environment, damn it. Plus, his wallet. Plus, he just liked the even distribution of weight on his back), and set off through the dense crowds of Manhattanites prowling for lunch.

 

The Starbucks was packed, the line for the coffee wrapping around counters and benches, and Clint had legitimately never seen such a long line in his life. 

 

Still. The next nearest coffee destination was inside The Plaza. Or the St. Pierre. Or, of course, The Four Seasons.

 

Clint resigned himself to standing in line.

 

In front of him, a pair of toddlers and their mother were singing the alphabet song, and Clint found himself humming along, unable to resist. 

 

Until the mother gave him a look, and Clint’s hands-up-not-a-creep-smile only made her scowl at him.

 

He pulled his phone up to cover most of his face, and realized that the battery was getting dangerously low.

 

Fuck.

 

He was going to need it to figure out which train to take to get back to Penn Station. Plus, he would need it to show the director things, probably, and-

 

Not quite panicking, but getting rather close to it, Clint looked around and spotted a wall outlet. An empty, minuscule little table with two chairs guarded it.

 

Clint looked between the impossibly long line and the wall outlet, and sighed.

 

_ Goodbye, coffee. _

 

He sat down in one of the chairs and fished his charger out of his backpack.

 

Bending down to plug it in, Clint became aware of two things at once.

 

There was a pair of battered red Chuck Taylor’s in front of his face, size  _ huge _ , and he realized he could feel the prickle of air conditioning against his back, which meant his shirt was riding up and his pants riding down and-

 

Three things. He was wearing his lucky boxers today. His lucky Hello Kitty boxers that Natasha had given him as a shitty joke of a birthday present two years ago, but which felt amazingly soft, and on laundry day eighteen months ago, had been his only clean pair when he had a job interview, and he had nailed the interview, and ever since, he wore them on interviews and-

 

Four things. There was no way the guy with giant feet couldn’t see at least part of those boxers.

 

Clint straightened up, knowing his face was red, and dared to look up the legs attached to the Chucks. And up and up, and shit. And  _ fuck _ .

 

Standing in front of Clint was, hands-down, dick-up, the most gorgeous man he had ever set eyes on.

 

Golden blond hair, golden stubble along his ridiculously-chiseled jawline and cheeks, brilliant blue eyes, smirking wide lips and a body to literally die for. Or die on the floor at his feet for. Which was what Clint was thinking about doing right this second.

 

“Hi,” he managed to say.

 

The man’s smirk turned into a grin that revealed blindingly white teeth.

 

“Meow,” he responded.

 

And Clint  _ really _ thought that dying at his feet was not only the best option, but his only option.

 

He found himself reaching for the back of his jeans even as he told himself not to.

 

_ Play it cool _ , he berated himself.

 

“Did I steal your table? Do you want me to go?”

 

The golden Adonis lifted his eyebrows.

 

“I don’t see my name on it. Actually, I was going to ask you if I could share the table with you - or at least, the outlet? My iPad is almost dead, and I-”

 

“Please, please share me. Share the table. The outlet. Not me.”

 

_ What the fuck? That’s  _ cool _? Barton, you are a fucking car wreck _ .

 

Adonis just smiled again, toothpaste commercial-bright smile catching Clint off-guard, and he found himself smiling back as the other man sat in the other seat, set down his backpack ( _ Ha! Take that, Nat! If the sexiest man alive can carry a backpack, so can I! _ ), and pulled out an iPad and a charger.

 

Clint tried not to stare.

 

He also tried not to do more than swallow and blush when their knees knocked together under the table.

 

“Tight quarters,” Adonis said.

 

Clint nodded.

 

And nodded.

 

And kept nodding.

 

_ WHAT THE FUCK? _

 

He forced himself to draw in a breath and  _ stop nodding _ .

 

Instead, he picked up his phone and opened his email. Refreshed it even though he had just done that less than two minutes ago, while standing in line trying not to die under the mother’s death glare.

 

Unsurprisingly, there were no new messages.

 

Clint noticed that Adonis had propped his iPad on the table, and that the screen was showing a ridiculously complicated-looking spreadsheet.

 

The rows were dotted with at least half a dozen, if not more, colors, and there were so many columns, so many rows and-

 

“It looks bad, doesn’t it?”

 

Clint looked up to see Adonis offering an almost shy smile.

 

“Uhhh, what looks bad?”

 

Adonis waved a hand at the screen of his iPad.

 

“My Slut Sheet.”

 

“Your… I’m sorry, your  _ what _ ?”

 

“My Slut Sheet. It’s a spreadsheet documenting all of my slutty misdeeds since I turned thirty.”

 

Adonis scrolled down, and down, and  _ down _ .

 

Clint stared. First at the iPad, and then at Adonis.

 

“It looks… very well-documented,” he offered.

 

Adonis laughed, deep and rich, and  _ fuck _ if that wasn’t a sound Clint wanted - no,  _ needed _ \- to hear again.

 

“Well, it wasn’t at first, but then I kind of said yes to the same bad ideas twice, and realized that I needed to keep track of them.”

 

Clint arched an eyebrow.

 

It wasn’t that he doubted Adonis’s ability to hookup with what looked like a truly impressive number of people, but  _ why _ -

 

Adonis turned the iPad towards Clint.

 

“So, green is for guys I’ve met on Grindr. Yellow is for Tinder. Red for Scruff. Blue for JDate. Orange for Surge. Saffron for Hornet. Lime green for Jack’d. Peach for Chappy. Lavender for Feeld. Pink for OKCupid. Brown for Zoosk. Silver for Elite Singles. Teal for Hinge. Eggshell for U2nite. Purple for random hookups.”

 

“That- I didn’t even know all of those apps existed. Did you make some of those up?”

 

Adonis grinned at him.

 

“Nope. Every single one of them is real.”

 

“Wow.”

 

Clint was speechless, and that was a rare enough occurrence that he wasn’t sure how to pull himself back together.

 

“Wait, you don’t list their names.”

 

He looked over the columns - age, location, job, location of date, ranking of oral sex, anal sex, frottage, whether or not they liked to hold hands, opinions on the Yankees, Rangers, Jets and Nets. But no names. In fact, the far left column was filled with descriptions.

 

_ Obsessed with his balls _ .

 

_ Lives with his brother and his wife. _

 

_ Ex-Marine, too many cats. _

 

_ Can’t see chest tattoos through body hair. _

 

_ Thinks Star Wars and Star Trek are the same thing. _

 

_ Maybe a politician? _

 

“Who is ‘maybe a politician’?”

 

Adonis shrugged.

 

“No idea, but he sent me an unsolicited dick pic on JDate.”

 

“Isn’t that… normal?”

 

Adonis arched one eyebrow.

 

“Not if the only thing I messaged him was a picture of me at my bar mitzvah.”

 

Clint stared, and couldn’t decide if he should laugh or gasp in horror.

 

In the end, his body decided to compromise, and he choked on a sound that was part cough, part laugh, and part scream of terror.

 

Adonis nodded in agreement.

 

“Exactly. So, I figure - must be a politician. But,” Adonis held up one finger and scrolled down to the bottom of the spreadsheet, “I need to fill out this guy before I forget.”

 

“You- you just came from a hookup?” Clint looked around, which was stupid. It wasn’t as if there would be a sign that read  _ Adonis had sex - right around the corner! _

 

“Yeah. Well. Sort of. Let’s see… I’m going to call him…  _ Checkerboard _ .”

 

“Checkerboard? What-”

 

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Adonis was silent as he tapped away on the touchscreen, pausing every once in a while, cocking his head to the side as he apparently considered his responses. When he was done, he highlighted the entire row in peach. 

 

The last column, Clint could now see, was labeled - ‘would fuck again’.

 

Checkerboard had earned himself a ‘ _ hell no’ _ .

 

His task complete, Adonis closed his iPad but left it charging. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and grinned at Clint.

 

And Clint immediately proceeded to shove his own foot in his mouth.

 

“Why do you have a Slut Sheet? Why are you- why are you hooking up with every dick that comes across your path?”

 

“Well, I’m not hooking up with  _ everyone _ . Actually, I only hook up with sixteen percent of the guys who approach me.”

 

“I- Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

 

Adonis shrugged again.

 

“No, well, I did sort of shove it in your face. I decided that the year I turned thirty was going to be my last year of just… no-strings, consequence-free safe sex. Just a year of hooking up and not trying to find the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

 

It was finally Clint’s turn to arch an eyebrow.

 

“I’m just saying,” Adonis huffed, “that ever since I was a kid, I’ve thought that there would be... the one, you know? This one perfect guy for me, and I would  _ know _ who it was, and I would be happier than I’ve ever been before. But my twenties were… kind of rough. A lot of  _ not _ the one perfect guys in my life. So, this is my year of not looking for the perfect guy and just looking for a fun guy. When I turn thirty-one, then I’ll start looking for Mr. Right again. But until July fourth, I’m an unapologetic slut.”

 

“I-”

 

Before Clint could even form a coherent thought, or even continue to speak whatever nonsense he had been about to, his phone alarm went off.

 

1:52.

 

Shit. That meant he had eight minutes to get back to the theatre for the interview.

 

“I’m sorry. I have to go. I- Good luck on your… slut thing.”

 

Clint almost tripped over - the chair? Adonis’s feet? His own feet? - as he pulled the charger free of the wall.

 

“Thanks - you want to help me out with it?”

 

Clint looked up from grabbing his backpack to see that Adonis had another grin on his face, something that rivaled the sun in its brightness, and Clint had a moment of genuinely forgetting to  _ breathe _ as he stared at him.

 

“I- Me?”

 

“Yeah.” Adonis’s eyes trailed over Clint, from his paint-flecked shoes to his definitely-not-clean-enough-for-this-interview clothes, and up to Clint’s face. “Definitely you.”

 

“I don’t even know your name,” Clint managed as he finally shoved his charger into his backpack and hoisted it onto his shoulders.

 

“Steve,” Adonis said. “And you are?”

 

“Clint. And I- I really have to go. I’ve got an interview and-”

 

“Yeah, of course. Here, just let me put my number in your phone. If you’re interested, send me a text.”

 

Clint passed over his phone, because he might be an idiot, but he wasn’t an  _ idiot _ .

 

Steve smirked, fingers flying over Clint’s phone for a few seconds before he handed it back.

 

“That was quick.”

 

“I’m efficient,” Steve shrugged.

 

“Yeah. Um-”

 

“You’ve got an interview,” Steve reminded him gently.

 

“Right. Yes. I do. I am. I- Great. I’ll- Okay.”

 

Clint practically fled the scene, and then he nearly got run over by a taxi at the cross-walk on his way back to the theatre as he looked for Steve’s info in his contacts.

 

_ Slutty Steve _ .

 

He had actually called himself that.

 

And Clint… 

 

Clint really, really wanted to be more than just another addition to Steve’s Slut Sheet.

 

But, he decided as he put his phone away and walked into the theatre, it was a place to start.

 

-o-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
